I found my shoes. Yes, this is a good thing. They’d been lost for a long time. Two years and some change. ?These were my tuxedo shoes and they’ve only been worn twice.
It would be inaccurate of me to say I’d lost my shoes because my shoes never really went anywhere unless they were attached to my feet, and these shoes hadn’t been attached to my feet since my son got married in 2010. They’d been sitting right where I put them when I got home, and if we’re being frank here I didn’t really “put them” where they were found. I more like chucked them, up the stairs some 15 feet in the air, over the railing to come to rest in the far corner of the landing.
So how could I lose them if they didn’t move from where I’d chucked them?
That, my friends, is the question of the day.
Flash forward six months to early December. I’d had enough of the clutter. In a fit of disgusted anger I cleaned up and started chucking clothes.
Two piles – those I kept and those I wanted to throw away – one pile in my bedroom where I could do laundry and the second pile stacked in the corner upstairs on the landing… right on top of my shoes.
Over the last two years that pile has grown significantly because I never throw anything away. So, this was one big pile; actually more mountain than pile.
For more than two weeks I looked for my tuxedo shoes. I could say I tore my apartment apart, but it was already torn apart before I started looking for my shoes.
There were only so many places my shoes could hide in my apartment. There simply isn’t that much room and I didn’t throw them away because I never throw anything away.
This isn’t the first time I’ve lost things in plain sight. There was the issue with my missing pants a couple years back, and then the whole thing with the missing bag of French fries.
How do you lose a pair of pants, anyway? I know, why ask about pants? How do you lose a 5-pound bag of French fries?
I understand there’s only one place you can put French fries and that’s the freezer, and even after tearing the freezer apart three times I could not find the missing bag of fries. It took a week to find the fries… all “sogged-out” and starting to mold… in the top cabinet… perched next to a box of Cap’n Crunch.
The pants situation was somewhat similar to the tux shoes in that they were covered up by something else and hidden. But as usual, after weeks of fruitless searching for my shoes I was struck by an epiphany as I emerged from the shower just five minutes before I was to leave for Atlanta and my daughter’s wedding, resigned to the fact I’d be going sans tuxedo shoes.
Where are the tuxedo shoes?
They are not where you looked Old Grasshopper… but where you haven’t looked… only then will they be found.
And that’s when I regarded the mountain of clothes. I grabbed a shovel and started digging. And voila, I found my shoes. The search for Jimmy Hoffa was easier.
Sometimes it’s really scary being me.

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